Originally from Port Elizabeth, Behrens was recently awarded a bursary from the prestigious The Digital Animation & Visual Effects School in Florida in the United States. The exhibition displayed Behrens’ diverse work ranging from pencil drawings to intricate paintings up for auction in order to raise funds to support his dream to move to and live in the United States.
Behrens said he had been interested in art his entire life starting with pencil drawings and moving into other mediums in high school. He added, “Some of the artworks at the auction include my first charcoal and pencil drawings.”
He also exhibited his own protest against Rhino Poaching in his work entitled Discharged, which is a piece of a rhino made of numerous bullet shells to symbolise all the rhinos killed over the past 10 years. He said, “The shells mean that the bullet has been spent, and in essence in artwork it symbolises how the rhino is shot and this is what’s left.”
Behrens’ mother, Genevieve Black, who was able to organise the Saxon Hotel auction and expressed tremendous pride in his reception of the school’s bursary. She said, “He is not afraid to work hard. This is gap year and all the artworks shows what he’s been doing, which is raise money to live abroad.”
The exhibition and auction led to Behrens raising about R128 000 from the sales of his artworks, just R22 000 shy of his primary target of R150 000 which he still has his eye on.
He said, “I was initially worried about the auction, but it went better than I could’ve ever have dreamed.”
